Virginia Woolf and the Common(wealth) Reader presents twenty-eight essays and four poetic invocations delivered at the 23rd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, hosted by Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. The theme of the conference, the concept of "common(wealth)," addresses geographical, political, and imaginary spaces in which different readers and readings vie for primacy of place. The essays in this collection, including keynote addresses by Rosemary Ashton, Paul Delany, Christine Froula, Mary Ann Gillies, Sonita Sarker, and Jane Stafford, reflect upon "common(wealth)" as a constructed entity, one that necessarily embodies tensions between the communal and individual, traditional culture and emergent forms, indigenous people and colonial powers, and literary insiders and outsiders.

Helen Wussow is the Dean of Lifelong Learning and Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.

Professor Mary Ann Gillies teaches in late nineteenth and early twentieth century British literature and Anglo-American modernism at Simon Fraser University.